[el´ vazh] n. m. The education of wine. A blog.
Part of Vincent Wine Company, Portland, OR

September 09, 2009

Maison Ilan blog from Burgundy

I twittered about this yesterday but wanted to give this a little more attention. Are any of you following Ray Walker's story? I think I wrote about him previously. The short version -- wine geek gets the winemaking bug (sounds familiar), gets any work he can manage in local California wineries to gain experience (yep), decides to launch his own wine label (uh huh), ditches that plan to go to France and make pinot noir from the grail, the Cote d'Or of Burgundy (definitely not like what I'm doing).

How do you even think of doing that, much less wake up the next morning and still think it's a good idea? Who knows, but Ray is already way ahead of his plans to made some regional and village level Burg for starters. Turns out he's sourced grapes from a 1er cru site in Morey-St.-Denis and two grand cru in Gevrey, including Le Chambertin.That's nothing less than stunning.

So, while I'm humbly launching my own pinot label here in Oregon, living the dream as some people might put it, I am among the many following Ray's progess via the web. Check out his Maison Ilan blog and follow along as well. Great pictures, an honest assessment of the culture shock of going out on a limb in a difficult business as an outsider in a foreign county, and the simple joy of seeing what happens. Keep it up Ray.

3 comments:

Vincent,thank you so much for the truly kind words. I applaud what you are doing as well. It takes a lot to give up something you know and are familiar with but much mire difficult to not follow your ambition when you believe in it.

Vincent Wine Company

We don't just blog about wine. We make it, too, at the Southeast Wine Collective at 2425 SE 35th Place in Portland, Oregon, at SE Division. Come taste our Willamette Valley Pinot noir wines along with three other local producers that share this beautiful winery space. And don't forget to email us to join the Vincent Wine Company mailing list.

We're also part of Guild Winemakers, a co-operative project between four Portland-area winemakers. We produce red and white wines priced for everyday enjoyment. Look for them all over Oregon and in several states across the country.